Two years ago, I wrote a column about same-sex marriage, and how there were no sane or logical arguments against it. I have to admit something now: I said something in that column that was wrong:

There is an argument I take notice of, though it’s not an argument against gay marriage. It’s that we couldn’t get a law passed, that too many ordinary people are opposed, and it would never be worth burning off the political capital to try it.

Well, here’s what I believe. There are a small group of people passionately opposed, and a small group passionately in favour, and like any issue, a huge mass in the middle who just don’t give a crap one way or the other.

I was wrong, and I know this for sure now because we actually have polling data. (Hat-tip to No Right Turn here.) Research NZ did the polling and I've just had a thorough read through the results. Turns out almost nobody doesn't have an opinion. In a survey of 500 people, with a margin of error of +/- 4.6%, 60% of New Zealanders over 18 are in favour of same-sex marriage, and 34% are opposed. Only 2% offered no opinion. The question asked was:

The next few questions are on a range of topical issues, the first is on marriage... In your opinion, should same-sex couples also be allowed to marry?

In a way, this is a huge relief. As far as public opinion goes, it turns out that we're not "more socially conservative than Iowa", or "more religiously-influenced than Spain".

So given that in fact voters favour same-sex marriage by nearly two to one, why is this considered such an untouchably dangerous issue for any political party? It is, after all, what "we" want. (Yes, I know, on polling, "we" have wanted some pretty fucking insane things, but nobody's been arguing against, say, being "tough on crime" because it would be a vote-loser.)

Well, okay, maybe there are variations in support by demographics that would make it risky for a particular party because of where they draw their support from. Labour and Maori and Polynesian voters, for instance.

Support for same-sex marriage among Pakeha? 61%. Among Maori and Polynesian? 66%. Okay, maybe poor people are more socially conservative? No, no significant difference by income.

The significant differences are by gender – males 54% yes 41% no, females 66% yes 27% no – and by age. Over 55 is the only category where support drops below half*, to 44% in favour and 49% opposed. Among people 18-34, support is at 79% in favour and just 19% opposed.

So really, the only way a party refusing to support same-sex marriage makes any sense is if their target voters are old. Even men are more in favour than they are opposed. And as we've seen, targeting older voters is a long-term winning strategy.

To be fair to the Greens, they do at least have a solid, specific policy platform on this issue. This hasn't, however, led to a Green MP submitting a private member's bill amending the Marriage Act, or commiting to personally fighting for such a bill.

Of course, any vote on removing the discriminatory language from the Marriage Act would be a conscience one. What that means is that it's worth asking the question of every candidate for every party. I'll be writing to every candidate in the Port Hills electorate, for instance, pointing out this polling data, and asking:

- would you personally be prepared to put this bill forward?

- would you vote in favour of it if someone else did?

And I'll be letting them know that yes, my electorate vote is entirely up for grabs on this issue. Here's a list of candidates by electorate so, if you want, you can do the same. Here, also, is a list of how MPs voted on the Civil Union bill. The Labour candidate for my electorate is Ruth Dyson. She voted in favour. The National candidate is David Carter. He voted against. He also voted in favour of the Marriage (Gender Clarification) amendment. What a guy.

My party vote? Currently with the Greens. But if another party is prepared to publicly make a commitment to put the bill forward and back it, and the Greens won't match that commitment, I will change my vote. For serious. That's how important not being More Socially-Conservative than Argentina is to me.

I also think it's really important to let our politicians know that the 60% vote too. Given we outnumber them nearly two to one, why can't we get heard over the morally-conservative opposition? Why aren't we saying, very loudly and publicly, you know what? Yous were wrong about Homosexual Law Reform. Yous were wrong about Civil Unions. The sky didn't fall. In fact, nothing bad happened at all. You're also wrong about same-sex marriage. Our current marriage law is unjust, it's unfair, it's discrimatory and it needs to change.

*Except for the very amorphous "other" ethnic category, which does so because the "don't know" is significantly higher.

196 responses to this post

I don't know whether that's entirely reliable on marriage equality, since there was a thick (and IMO enormously distasteful) strain of "hell, you fags have marriage in all but name STFU already" -- which is not so much missing the point, but refusing to get in the same room with it.

Having recently become a marriage and CU celebrant, the "in all but name" argument really annoys me. It bugs the hell out of me that I had to apply separately to do both.

Because if they were "the same", I shouldn't have to do that. The legislation governing them would be the same, so would the paperwork, and if I am fit to officiate one kind of ceremony, surely I am to do the other?

If you combine the Civil Union and Marriage (Gender Equality) Amendment Bill votes, you can certainly pick people who won’t be supporting gay marriage.

That's a fair point, but the marriage equality vote in New York only passed because four GOP state senators with less than encouraging track records crossed the floor. Since my psychic abilities are kind of crap, I wonder how deep the convictions are of many of the MPs who voted against the Civil Union Bill. Would a sound argument in favour plus having it drummed into their heads that the electoral risks range from minimal to non-existent change the landscape?

OTOH, when you have the incumbent MP for Not-Brokeback-Mountain and her Labour opponent fudging up a storm, that spinelessness arguably is as deep as it is irrational. What really made me angry about that column from Nikki Kaye and Jacinda Adern is that they're smart and decent people; and coming out unequivocally in favour of marriage equality is going to hurt you in Ponce-on-by and Gay Lynn? Really?

So, what about a referendum then? Obviously it would be a while before it could be voted on, but why not? If Family First can get enough people for that stupid smacking referendum then I surely this shouldn't be too hard?

And, handily Family First could continue to use their voteno.org website (unless the question were phrased so that the 'No' option was in favour of same sex marriage).

Please don't think I'm trolling for saying this, but I don't support same-sex marriage because I don't support such unnatural lifestyles. By which of course I mean "marriage".

I'm not just saying that from some cynical divorcé's perspective (though there is that). Of course I support the right of people to have their relationships recognised by law, so that property rights, immigration rights and the various rights and responsibilities of child rearing can be protected. But by just expanding the definition of "marriage" from "one man and one woman in an emotionally and sexually exclusive relationship for the rest of their life" to include same-sex pairings doesn't include all the diversity of human bonds that might benefit from such protections. If anything, the standard definition is less "natural" than many of the other forms of bond that anthropologists have defined as "marriage" across the wide diversity of human culture.

Of course, if you put me on the spot and asked me whether I want same-sex couples to have the same rights as different-sex couples, then I'd say "hell yes". But I'd rather see the definition of civil unions extended (or some entirely new set of "unions" defined) to provide people with legal recognition of their relationships, and leave it up to them to choose whatever social, cultural or religious definitions of "marriage" suits them as a celebration of their bond.

The report included a Herald-DigiPoll survey of 750 people, which found that New Zealanders broadly approved of the Government’s plans to recognise gay relationships as civil unions but not as marriage.

A majority of those polled agreed with the civil union plan (by 56 per cent to 39 per cent) but disagreed with the idea of gay marriage by almost the same margin (54 per cent to 40 per cent).

Does anyone have any other pre-2005 poll numbers? (I’m not counting the ropey Close Up phone poll that registered huge opposition, on the basis that it was a ropey Close Up phone poll.)

According to the new poll, support has increased by 50%. Even allowing that some old people have died since, and the general shift to acceptance in western countries, it does seem to me that civil unions have done the job many of us hoped they would.

I suspect doubters have noted the Obvious Failure of The World To End as a result of civil unions, and perhaps even seen friends and family happily “married” by that means. Clearly, it is time to deploy Phase 2 of the Homosexual Agenda.

According to the new poll, support has increased by 50%. Even allowing that some old people have died since, and the general shift to acceptance in western countries, it does seem to me that civil unions have done the job many of us hoped they would.

And this is one of the reasons I was in favour of civil unions, because it was clearly going to do this. Because I am, of course, an ideologically-bankrupt incrementalist. The other reason is the reason I have one: because people who want 'legal recognition of their relationship' without the traditional 'baggage' of marriage could have that. And as a cynical divorcée, that was what I wanted for me.

But as someone who 'didn't (personally) want a bar of it', I have that option. I got the choice, everyone should have that choice, including being able to choose marriage because they are invested in it. Don't want to be married? That option already exists. Do want to be married? It may not. And marriage is, for all its emotional baggage and discriminatory history, a secular legal contract.

Do you remember that early in the CUB debate there was a group called Lesbians Who Don't Want a Bar of It?

And my response to such groups is the same as my response to bigots and others attempting to impose their particular values on everyone else: if you don't like same-sex marriage, then you can always not have one. If you want someone else not to have a same-sex marriage, well, sorry, that's not really your decision to make.

The proper people to decide on individual social relationships are the individuals concerned. And if we equalise the law, they'll be able to.

But I'd rather see the definition of civil unions extended (or some entirely new set of "unions" defined) to provide people with legal recognition of their relationships, and leave it up to them to choose whatever social, cultural or religious definitions of "marriage" suits them as a celebration of their bond.

I'd wager, though, that there are more people who want to be able to be married than people who want the government to stop calling their recognition of long-term partnerships "marriage" altogether. And, all things considered, I think it's more important for people who want to be able to marry to have that right, because marriage does still carry that social recognition. The rest can be sorted later.

Or, you know, maybe most gay people would rather ditch marriage altogether. I'm prepared to be persuaded otherwise by data. I guess I feel that *even if that were true*, it would still be an important thing to give the people who *did* want it the right. Because it's what it says about us as a country - about how we choose to treat all our citizens - that matters.

ut by just expanding the definition of “marriage” from “one man and one woman in an emotionally and sexually exclusive relationship for the rest of their life” to include same-sex pairings doesn’t include all the diversity of human bonds that might benefit from such protections.

And I am, of course, in favour of legal recognition of relationships that involve more than two people. Like I said, dirty incrementalist, one thing at a time.

Do you remember that early in the CUB debate there was a group called Lesbians Who Don't Want a Bar of It?

At the time I said that anyone who tried to pull a shotgun wedding on any dyke of my acquaintance would live to rue the day. Not long and comfortably, but the rue would be epic.

I guess I feel that *even if that were true*, it would still be an important thing to give the people who *did* want it the right.

+ infinity minus one, Lucy. To be frank, GLBT who don't give a shit about marriage equality are entitled to their view. But they really better think long and hard about why they're OK with being told that a bleeding obvious inequality in law is as good as it gets.

It's about as fuck-witted as saying "Hell, I don't like children so why don't we STFU about homophobic inequality in adoption law and move on to some real issues". It's a very real issue to plenty of GLBT people and if I want others to respect my non-Borgness I've got to repay the courtesy.

But I’d rather see the definition of civil unions extended (or some entirely new set of “unions” defined) to provide people with legal recognition of their relationships, and leave it up to them to choose whatever social, cultural or religious definitions of “marriage” suits them as a celebration of their bond.

Wait a moment, chap -- that's pretty damn close to the perfectly principled libertarian position that the State shouldn't be in the 'marriage business' at all. Until then, could I haz equality before the law as it stands while my 66 year old partner can still make it up the aisle without being converted into a Dalek first?

Wait, that’s the definition of Marriage? Damn there’s a lot of people who need to be reading the fine print.

Personally I’m in favour of getting back to the truly traditional “formally acknowledge people who want to profitably combine their assets and establish kinship bonds between their extended families, the results to be invested in their mutual heirs” definition.

Personally I’m in favour of getting back to the truly traditional “formally acknowledge people who want to profitably combine their assets and establish kinship bonds between their extended families, the results to be invested in their mutual heirs” definition

Could we manage something where you can opt to explicitly NOT "establish kinship bonds between extended families"? Because that would be... quite useful.

Why aren't we saying, very loudly and publicly, you know what? Yous were wrong about Homosexual Law Reform. Yous were wrong about Civil Unions. The sky didn't fall. In fact, nothing bad happened at all. You're also wrong about same-sex marriage. Our current marriage law is unjust, it's unfair, it's discriminatory and it needs to change.

+1. Time for a Respectable Demure Legally-Bound-People Stroll perhaps?

I'm not website-clever, but it strikes me there's a place for a blog/site devoted to sharing feedback from candidates across the country on this issue....

So really, the only way a party refusing to support same-sex marriage makes any sense is if their target voters are old.

I'm nitpicking, but to me it makes perfect sense for a party to oppose same-sex marriage if that's what its members (and donars) want.

Target voters are just a means to an end for a political party, and there are plenty of unrelated reasons why a target voter might support a party irrespective of its stance on same-sex marriage. The only reason for a party to change its policy for voters is if those voters suddenly start making it an issue and saying they'll switch support because of it. I'd guess most voters still don't see it as directly impacting them as much as other stuff, even if they have a clear view.

Maybe the "old people" angle is more a reflection of people who influence and run political parties, and not those who vote for them.

I'm in favour of it. However, there's a difference between substantive equality issues like transgender legal equality and inclusive adoption reform that means that they need to precede any moves to introduce SSM proper. Still, at least we don't have to have a campaign to remove a ridiculous pre-emptive legislative ban like that horrible burnt umber rock outcrop to our northwest...